"You can say 'molested,' but those children, as you heard say [grown-up Robson and Safechuck], they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn't kill them."

Streisand also added that she felt sorry for the alleged victims and Jackson.

"I feel bad for the children," she said.

"I feel bad for him. I blame, I guess, the parents, who would allow their children to sleep with him. Why would Michael need these little children dressed like him and in the shoes and the dancing and the hats?"

Dan Reed, the director of the Leaving Neverland documentary that recently aired across the world, reacted to her comments on Twitter by saying: "'It didn't kill them" @BarbraStreisand did you really say that?!.'"

Reed also hit out at Jackson fans this week for the "vile and absurd" attacks on the two men who say the singer abused them for years.

He said a vocal minority of fans were leading a campaign against the two-part HBO film, which has broken streaming records and which the Jackson estate is suing for $US100 million (88 million euros).

Robson and Safechuck have been assailed on social media for telling Reed in the film how Jackson groomed them and their families before the boys were sexually abused at his Neverland Ranch in California.

Last week, fan groups said they were bringing a case against the men in the French courts for "sullying" Jackson's memory.

Reed said the first reaction of Jackson's defenders had always been to attack his victims since questions were first raised about the star in 1993.

"To prosecute men you have the courage to say they were raped as children by this powerful godlike individual, to make them into the scapegoats is beyond absurd and quite vile," the director told AFP.

He said child sex abuse victims were often treated like heretics.

"It is a kind of blasphemy when you accuse somebody who is a pillar of the community of such a grotesquely horrific act, so bad in fact that people do not want to hold that image in their heads.

"That's what generates this rage against the victims. It's heretical. Not only is your godhead human but he does this appalling thing to children," Reed said in Paris, where the film will be aired on French television this week.